Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/588

 584 Mason "DEVOTEMENT" OR "DENOTEMENT"? A QUARTO QUANDARY AND QUITTANCE Professor H. C. Hart, on page 115 in his (undated) edition of "Othello," published by the Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indianapo- lis, (Act II, Scene 3, line 328), sums up our quandary thus: "There has been confusion in the collation here. F 1, Q 1 read 'deuotement.' The editors of the Cambridge Shakespeare (reading 'denotement' in text) collate 'deuotement' Q 1, F 1, Q 2, whereas Q 2 reads 'denotement' (followed by Theobald). 1 Again, New Eng. Diet, gives F 1 'devotement,' and both Quartos (wrongly) 'denotement,' while at the latter word the reference is overlooked in its proper place. 2 Furness, again, collates denotement Q 1, 2; the British Museum Q 2 has distinctly 'denotement.' " The reading is unquestionably "deuotement" in the copies of Q 1 and Q 2 which I have been permitted to examine, by the courtesy of the owners or the librarians, in the collections of the Elizabethan Club of Yale University, the Boston Public Library, the New York Public Library, Mr. William A. White of Brook- lyn, and Mr. Henry E. Huntington of New York: i.e., five copies of Q 1 and six of Q 2, for Mr. Huntington has two copies of Q 2 (the Locker- Church and the Devonshire). I have examined further three other copies of Q 2, in the collections of Dr. James B. Clemens of New York, Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan of New York, and the John Carter Brown Library of Brown University, in Providence, respectively. Mr. George Watson Cole also kindly let me ascertain that the reading is "devote- ment" in Mr. Huntington's six later quartos (1655, 1681, 1687, 1695, 1705, and 1710). Whence then arises this "confusion in the collation"? One possible source of error is the too trusting use of reprints or fac-similes for originals. The Steevens reprint, 1766, gives "u" 1 Theobald specifically states that all the copies seen by him read "u." 2 In order to restrict our problem to a quarto quandary only, we may pass over Professor Hart's tacit suppression of the New Eng. Diet's ascription of the reading "denotement" to F 2, as well as of the Cambridge editor's ascription of the reading "devotement" to F 2. In the Methuen fac-simile, the Yale University Library original, and the Elizabethan Club original, the reading of F 2 is "devotement."